Living Energy Farm

The first one was hard. It’s hard to film people and it’s hard to get started. It’s hard to ask them to stand still. To repeat themselves. To wait for the wind to die down. It’s a trial by fire (the color of red earth and copperhead snakes we’ve been told to watch the ground for) but we’re learning quickly and growing braver.

In the morning, New York feels a million miles and many moons away. These days feel long but simple. Rising with the birds’ song and the increasing heat inside our cheap but much appreciated tent. Meals with sunburnt strangers. A big clay dish covered in iridescent tinfoil. We stucco straw bale walls, we rinse our hands with rain water.

We’re filming – interviews, rocking chairs, barefoot babies and a goat on a leash. Even the compost toilet is a thing of beauty. Long walks to the car when we needed to charge the camera battery or share a beer.

No moment too difficult, no thoughts of turning back. I fall asleep whispering affirmations to myself. I don’t feel proud, but the word is starting to trickle from the mouths I love the most. I wonder if I mean it when I say I don’t want to be a waitress. I’m quite happy as a waitress.

At night the moon comes up, the bats come out and Jesse plays the guitar on our colorful quilts. We shake the spiders off before putting it back in said cheap tent to cushion our hipbones.